Thursday, February 23, 2012

Balance rail accident in Buenos Aires reached 50 dead and 675 wounded

Balance accident at a railway station on Wednesday in downtown Argentina reached 50 dead and 675 wounded, many of the victims were taken by wagon roof turned into piles of iron in the crash."The death toll rises to 50", said the evening of the Government Secretary for Human Rights in Buenos Aires, Claudio Avruj, while the city Department of Health announced that the number of wounded increased from 600 to 675.Earlier, a police spokesman, Nestor Rodriguez, said that the impact, which occurred at 8.36 local time (13.36 GMT), rush hour, killed 49 people.Train, connecting the western outskirts of Buenos Aires and the city center,

carrying about 2,000 passengers. Operated by private company TBA, Once the convoy entered the station without brake, then hit the buffers at the end of the line, according to images recorded by surveillance cameras, broadcast on television.Firefighters and members of civil protection services had to cut the roof of the first cars to extract passengers.Train "came with a speed of 20 km / h and hit the buffers", for reasons that will be established by the investigation, said Transport Minister Juan Pablo Schiavi.TBA company said in a statement that he knows the causes of the accident and added that he would send "all information and images of justice".Conductor, though wounded, managed to leave the cab with preventive services, dozens of people who cared for the station, where many passengers are in shock, and spent part of the day sitting down.According to Schiavi, the conductor was "a young man of 28 years with great history and who was rested as shift started with a few stops before"."I felt the blast impact. It was a terrible noise. Train has not slowed. I saw people wounded in the neck, the arms and legs," he told the television Pedro Fuentes, a passenger.Sarmiento line through 70 kilometers and carry about 500,000 people per day. In September, an accident on the same line of nine people killed when two trains hit a bus at a railway crossing.Dozens of ambulances were mobilized, and the worst injured were evacuated by helicopters that landed in the market Once in the station."The train was full. Impact was terrible. People were trying desperately to get out," another passenger told press, Ezequiel."This is due to lack of maintenance trains, irregularities, deficiencies" and a service that functions poorly, the trade union denounced the radio one of the Railway Union, Roberto Nunez.Rolling stock on this line dates back to 1960. Argentine railways were privatized in the 90s. Country regularly experiences accidents in 2011 taking place three collisions, two of which resulted in casualties.This accident is the third worst in Argentina, after the Benavidez (northern outskirts of the capital), resulted in 236 victims in 1970, and produced in 1978 in the province of Santa Fe, resulting in 55 deaths.